Steven Galloway, The Confabulist (2014)

A fictionalised life of Houdini (lots of stuff about touring his stage act, with Galloway painstakingly explaining how Houdini achieved all his illusions; beefed-up with extra spy action-adventure flummery in Rasputin's Russia, and a diffusely paranoid subplot about hostility from the American spiritualist community) is plaited with a second story about Martin Strauss—an old man in present-day America whose tinnitus is actually a symptom of some rare brain disease where all cognitive function remains healthy but memories start disappearing to be replaced by ‘confabulations’ of fictional memory. The main thing about Martin is that, in his youth, he was the geezer who punched Houdini in the stomach when the magician wasn’t prepared, thus rupturing his appendix and killing him. Being the man who killed Houdini haunts Strauss

This is a promising-enough set-up; and the novel’s tag line (‘I didn’t just kill Harry Houdini. I killed him twice!’) points us towards the revelation that Houdini’s death from peritonitis might not be everything it appeared—the insurance company paid out double indemnity following the death, after all. And there is a twist ending, which is reasonably enough handled (hint: Houdini’s faked death was not about insurance fraud). But the shadow of Priest’s peerless The Prestige lies darkly over this book. It’s considerably feebler than the prior text, not only blandly written and very meagrely characterised (the two main characters never come alive at all), but too eager to explain as it is going along, too unsure of its own tone—too declarative, insufficiently negatively capable. Priest’s book uses its trick plotting to frame eloquent points about doubles and deceit, about fictions and truths. Galloway only pads out a shaggy dog story with lots of details from Houdini’s many biographies (one of which, I was pleased to see, has the triply exclamative title Houdini!!!). Bottom line: The Confabulist just doesn't really work. Less Houdini, more Who-cares-y.

In other news: Priest’s peerless Prestige sounds like a late Victorian emollient lotion. Buy some today!